Been There, Done That

NASCAR Sprint Cup - Chase for the championship

Experience favors past Cup champions in this year's Chase

NEW YORK -- There's no good reason for anyone to fear Matt Kenseth right now.

He is the least talked about, least intimidating, least brash and least boisterous of all the Chase drivers. He hasn't won this season and enters the Chase seeded 12th.

He even looks too friendly to be feared.

But Kenseth has something most of the field doesn't, and it's something that could make him formidable over the next 10 weeks.

A championship.

As all 12 drivers prepare for the 10-week Chase for the championship, which starts this weekend in New Hampshire, four look to add to their trophy collections. Jeff Gordon, Kenseth, Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson are all past champions who might have a mental edge over the championship-less.

"You look at Kenseth, the fact that he's won a championship, you look at Stewart, Gordon, there's something to it," Johnson said. "There really is something to that history and the fact that you've done that before. We all had our first one at some point so I'm not saying it's impossible but I think it does bring a little peace of mind."

Since his championship in 2003, Kenseth has finished in the top 10 every year. He's also one of two drivers to have made the Chase every year. Johnson is the other.

Johnson won his first championship in 2006 and followed that with his second last year.

Stewart's championships came in 2002 and 2005, making him a little less edgy and a little more confident.

"You ask, 'How do you win a championship?' " Stewart said. "Until you do it, you don't know. I think more so than anything it calms your nerves down [to win one]. There's no magic to it, there's no formula that says this, this, this and this. There's so many variables that you can't control. After you've won it, you have the confidence to say, 'OK, if we do our job, the rest of it will fall into place.' If we do our job, it can happen."

Kenseth is the only past champion coming into the 2008 Chase with just one championship.

"I think your first year or two when you start to be competitive you may be more prone to making more mistakes doing things like that. You would like to think the more experience you have in general hopefully the less mistakes you would make."

Before he won his championship, the Roush Fenway driver said he paid too much attention to what others were saying about him and his ability. That's one thing he's learned to ignore.

This year it's been Gordon and the No. 24 team's turn to take criticism. The year he missed the Chase in 2005, his years of experience with championship teams told him that season that they didn't deserve to be champions. This year his experience tells him he does have the car and the team to do it, if things fall the right way.

"All it takes is for us to perform one week," Gordon said.

He won all four of his championships within a seven-year span, with the first in 1995 and most recent in 2001.

Last season he won two races and had an average finish of 5.1 in the chase. Any other year that could've meant a championship, but last year Johnson got too hot.

Johnson's hot now, too, entering the Chase exactly as he did a year ago.

The battle between Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch, who seemed to be running far ahead of the pack with 14 wins between them, dominated NASCAR story lines this summer.

Johnson's win in Richmond muffled that.

"The 48's the car with all the momentum," chaser Kevin Harvick said, dismissing a notion that Edwards and Busch are the teams to beat.

Now Johnson is arguably the favorite, refusing to give up his title without a fight.

And the most fearsome thing about the No. 48 is that team, that driver and that organization knows exactly what it takes.